Saturday, May 3, 2014

360 Degree Feedback in New York (2014 NPT Prepcom and How the World Views the United States)

It's sobering to sit in the UN meeting hall and hear country after country state in polite but urgent tones that the U.S. (and other nuclear states) must eliminate their nuclear weapons, in accordance with Article VI of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT). For example:

While there has been progress in implementing some of the concrete steps agreed at successive review conferences since 1995, including through the reduction of the number of nuclear weapons in the arsenals of some nuclear weapon States
and increased transparency measures by some nuclear weapon States, the threat posed by nuclear weapons remains and the objectives of article VI of the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons have not yet been met. The continued
existence of nuclear weapons and the threat of their proliferation 44 years after the entry into force of the Treaty contradicts commitments made under the Treaty. Accordingly, the 2015 Treaty review cycle should decisively tackle these challenges and address the confidence deficit among States parties to the Treaty. The implementation of disarmament commitments aimed at achieving and sustaining a world free from nuclear weapons cannot be postponed again.

I don't know what else I imagined. (Perhaps they would say, "Sure, you committed to get rid of your nuclear weapons, but we're easy . . . ." ?) But somehow I was surprised again and again as country after country said, in effect, What you've done so far is not good enough and we expect -- demand -- nothing less than full elimination of your nuclear weapons.

Sculpture, UN Headquarters, New York
"Sculpture depicting St. George slaying the dragon. The dragon
is created from fragments of Soviet SS-20 and United States
Pershing nuclear missiles." (UN Photo/Milton Grant)

"26 September 2014 – The time has come for the total eliminationof nuclear weapons stockpiles, Secretary-General Ban Ki-moontoday declared as he urged the revival of nuclear disarmamentas a “top international priority.” (UN News Centre)

And so I tried for a moment to put myself in their position. How do you formulate a statement that can somehow convince the United States to eliminate its threatening nuclear weapons? How do you formulate the 10th request? Or the 100th? Knowing all the time that the United States is in the position -- will always be in the position -- to say, "No" ? At what point does it dawn on you that the United States will never give up its nuclear weapons, because it has the power and the rest of the world doesn't?

And then a thought experiment occurred to me: what if the rest of the world suddenly found itself in a different position? What if the rest of the world had a button in front of them, and by pressing that button, they could make the United States vanish? Would they say, "We must never, ever press this button; no, we will just continue to implore the United States to eliminate the weapons that threaten our destruction" ? Or would the rest of the world say, "This is our only salvation" ?

The biggest wake-up call is learning truly how you are viewed by others.

The Republic of the Marshall Islands (RMI) has filed unprecedented lawsuits against all nine nuclear-armed nations
for their failure to negotiate in good faith for nuclear disarmament,
as required under the Non-Proliferation Treaty. The suits were filed
against all nine nations at the International Court of Justice, with an
additional complaint against the United States filed in U.S. Federal
District Court.

With the New York Times publishing "analysis" like this, is it
any wonder that Americans can say things like . . . "It won't be a war.
We're just going to drop a few well placed bombs on them" . . . "the
object of fighting a war is to 'cause devastation'" . . . "my finger is
on the button. Run back to your mud hut or I am going to press it!" . . .
"when war is devastating, then people will do everything possible not
to get into it!" . . . as some of my high school classmates wrote on
Facebook today?

I don't think Alanna and I ever talked about what it must be like to be
trying to escape a shower of sparks and hot ash. But she seemed to know
that the sparks and hot ash are too important a part of the picture to
be left out.

We have had a window of opportunity -- nearly 70 years in which the
constitution of Japan has explicitly renounced war, pointing the way for
the rest of us. What have we imagined we were supposed to do?

I'm marveling at the adjacency of a piece of public art -- one
with a very clear message about the risk of human ambition and
self-absorption and heedlessness -- to the center of political power in
the city of Chicago.